Green hydrogen at $1.5–2.5/kg. Green ammonia, green steel, green aluminium, sustainable aviation fuel. Asia Energy Link delivering 82.5 GW. $68–135 billion per year in green industry at corridor maturity. Coal closes on economics, not mandate. Net zero achieved without political coercion or transition wreckage.
At $100–150/MWh Australian industrial power, green hydrogen costs $6–10/kg — uncompetitive with grey hydrogen, uncompetitive with imported alternatives. Green steel requires government subsidy. Green ammonia cannot undercut imported urea. Without cheap power, every green industry is a subsidy-dependent industry — and a subsidy-dependent industry will lose to the unsubsidised alternative as soon as a government changes.
Net Zero legislation mandates coal closure on a political timeline, not an engineering timeline. Coal is being shut before the replacement generation is built, before storage is solved, before the grid is reinforced for distributed renewables. The result is rising power prices, blackout risk, and a political backlash that threatens the entire decarbonisation programme. The mandate gets the headline; the engineering reality gets the bill.
Japan, South Korea, and the EU have legally binding net zero targets. Japanese and Korean steelmakers face EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism tariffs on high-emission steel. They need green steel and green hydrogen — and they cannot produce either at the required scale domestically. The market exists. The infrastructure to serve it from Australia does not.
120 GW of desert solar makes Australian industrial power the cheapest in the world. Every green industry flips: green H₂ $1.5–2.5/kg, green ammonia $300/tonne, green steel viable, green aluminium most profitable, SAF $2–4/litre, batteries competitive with China. The SBC delivers the power. Every downstream industry follows automatically. The market does the rest.
Years 1–3: moratorium on coal closures, SBC capitalised, prices falling. Years 3–10: corridor solar built — coal retires as renewables undercut it. Years 10–20: lowest domestic electricity prices in the world, remaining coal and gas retire on economics. Year 15+: Asia Link operational. No mandate. No crisis. Net zero achieved without the political coercion and transition wreckage of the current trajectory.
SBC corridor electrolysers at 6c/kWh: green hydrogen $1.5–2.5/kg. Japan needs $2–3/kg — the economics work for the first time. Export via Asia Energy Link. Piped to New Zealand replacing LNG imports. $10–20 billion per year at maturity. The single largest new export industry Australia will have built in a generation.
Four Phase 1 cables: Darwin → Singapore 8 GW · Darwin → Indonesia 8.5 GW · Darwin → PNG 3 GW · East Coast → NZ 5 GW. Phase 1: $16.7B/yr from Year 4. Full build: 82.5 GW, $57B/yr power revenue. Japan and Singapore each import 95% of their energy. Australian solar ends that permanently.
Every GW delivered to Indonesia, Singapore, and PNG displaces coal or diesel. 1 billion tonnes CO₂ avoided per year at full build. Article 6 of the Paris Agreement: carbon credit revenue flows to Australia — up to $75 billion per year at $75/tonne. Australia drags the region to net zero through infrastructure that makes clean energy the rational choice — and is paid for doing so.
No other country offers power + fibre + water + gas in a single cable lay. One pass installs multiple services simultaneously. Clean power closes coal plants. Fibre delivers green AI compute. Water conduits supply Pacific islands. H₂-ready gas pipelines support the hydrogen transition. The complete solution — not just the cheapest power.
Green ammonia: sovereign fuel, fertiliser, and grid storage. Green steel: Whyalla revived as a hydrogen-fed direct reduction smelter on the corridor. Green aluminium: lowest-cost on earth at 6c/kWh, no subsidy required. Each industry runs on the same input — cheap renewable power — and each is a separate multi-billion-dollar export industry. The SBC supplies all of them.